ARTICLES

Post-Partum Body Image issues in women

09 Sep 2016

A woman is the epitome of beauty! We hear this all the time and it plays on each woman to live up to this expectation. So much so that now even post giving birth to a baby she is supposed to be in perfect shape.

This pressure is just not external i.e. husband, in laws or friends but more so internal, where each ounce of body fat is seen as an enemy and utter disgust.

Many women have difficulty coping and accepting the extra kilos and post-delivery go under depression for the same. Stretch marks are no less a horror! One in three women dislike the way they look post pregnancy.

Social media has added to this pressure as well. Celebrities like Aishwarya Rai Bachan have gone through body shaming by fans for being overweight at her Can’s appearance in 2011 just after she was blessed with a baby.

The pressure to get back in shape is enormous. Sometimes this is precisely the reason why some women find it next to impossible to start losing. The STRESS ….about losing wight!

Many women find it like a vicious circle where they find themselves hungry often, thereafter feeling guilty about eating and feeling worse about the way they feel and look. “Looking into the mirror has become very painful after my baby” a new mom suffering from post-partum depression once shared with me.

We later discovered the insecurity that lay beneath, where she felt that it was her physical beauty that had appealed to her husband and now he just calls her a teddy bear.

She was at a point of a break down where we first started with her accepting herself the way she looks and moving to making changes that would make her feel better.

“Accepting pregnancy was easier than accepting myself look so ugly” said Rimpy who was just blessed with a baby girl. She also felt that she had thought that she would look the way she did soon after she delivered but only kept putting on weight.

While she felt that she was being cautious about what she was eating and seemed to be on a healthy diet, she would sometimes binge or go onto an emotional eating spree. Exercising on those days was just next to impossible. Rimpy was losing not just her confidence but her emotional sanity.

She would have repeated crying spells, she stopped going out as all that she would register was how people commented on her appearance. Her husband just couldn’t comprehend what the deal was! He felt she can lose weight later as her current focus should be their daughter.

This frustrated her even more as he would leave no stone unturned to make her feel “fat” and then not support her when she wanted to do something about it. Rimpy came to us when she was totally exhausted and felt helpless. With every passing session she felt more confident about herself and was able to take charge of her weight.

The constant pressure to be beautiful is downplaying the real beauty.

“Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she has that she is beautiful”.

If you are anxious and depressed because of the way you look post your delivery, then at ePsyClinic, you can take counseling help from India's best Pregnancy Wellness Psychologists.

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